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This Free Tool Could Slightly Change Your Life

You know I"m not one for hyperbole, but this free tool could slightly change your life. I also have news on a sale, a freebie giveaway, then something bearing a passing resemblance to a competition, as well as an interview, a guest post, and a gratuitous picture of a panda. Although is a picture of a panda ever really gratuitous? That question unanswered, and many more…

If you ever wanted to try my fiction, it has never been easier to do and you can pick up all three historical novels I’ve written for less than a dollar.

I’m running a Kindle Countdown Deal on my last release Liberty Boy, meaning you can grab that one for 99c from Amazon US, and a post-Brexit near-equivalent 99p from Amazon UK. Apologies to those living elsewhere, but please direct all raspberries in the direction of Seattle – they only allow Countdown Deals in those two territories right now. The 99c offer only runs until Thursday so get with the clickin".

This one is a little more inclusive: Uncommon Soldiers is a twinpack of historicals containing my first book A Storm Hits Valparaiso and my second Mercenary. It’s available from all the Amazons and you get BOTH for free – as long as you download it before Friday. But hey, why wait.

There you go, three historical novels for less than a dollar. Buy early and buy often! We can even play a fun game. I make up at least one word for each book and try and slip it past my editor, who is way too sharp for any such messing. But she is easily bribed, so if you find all three I guess I’ll have to come up with some kind of cool prize.

As part of promo week, I’ve been appearing hither and tither and generally tarting myself all over social media. I have an interview over at Unusual Historicals – a great site if you like HF set outside the usual Tudors etc. – where I talk about the rebellious background to Liberty Boy, namely the lesser-known (and spectacularly unsuccessful) 1803 Rising, and why I chose that as the backdrop for my story.

I also have a guest post over at Historical Fiction eBooks – another great author-powered resource for HF readers with book suggestions and posts and titles broken down by era.

This time I talk about the brutal execution of Irish rebel leader Robert Emmet right in the middle of Dublin, and the historical significance of British propaganda. Fun stuff!

Oh, before I forget, there’s something you should check out. Those who follow me on Twitter and Facebook might have noticed I’ve raised my graphics game quite a bit in the last month or so. I haven’t suddenly developed ninja-level Photoshop skills, nor do I have an army of virtual assistants, or Fiverr fiends toiling for me remotely.

I use a really cool FREE tool called Canva. My graphic designer sister introduced me to this, saying something like “this is going to put me out of a job.” She’s not wrong. Within five minutes I was producing reasonable looking stuff and within half an hour I was churning out hi-grade yokes. It even has all sorts of templates so that your image will be the optimal size for Twitter headers, Facebook ads, etc.

Seriously. I have no abilities whatsoever; I couldn"t draw a straight line with a ruler. My old art teacher still has PTSD from my time in school.

But you can see the kind of stuff I’ve been doing here. And did I mention it"s free? They don"t have an affiliate program, I"m not getting paid to recommend this (if I was, I"d be the richest man on Twitter), it"s just a really, really cool tool that has made my life so much easier. And prettier. See:

Back to the word-mines. The sequel to Liberty Boy is going well, and it now has the working title of Diemen’s Land. It’s proving darker again, if that’s possible.

Is that not just the Kindle Unlimited option to borrow for free? Let me know because giving something away I"m supposed to be charging for could blow a planet-sized hole in my plan to make a Scrooge McDuck-style pile of gold doubloons.

Loads of people recommended it to me, but I just ignored them because I was all like “Oh yeah, you SAY it"s easy but you haven"t seen me try and use these kinds of things. I could hurt someone.” And then I finally tried it and it was soooooooooooooo easy. If I wasn"t so stubborn…

Another free tool that doesn"t seem to be getting much notice is the Reedsy Book Editor, which does a great job very simply of formatting your book in ePub and Pdf. You just load your Word file, chapter by chapter (they"re working on doing the whole book, but it"s quite fast as it is…), and it does the rest. At the end of the process you export it in both formats, and head off for Draft2Digital/Kindle/etc.
And, no, I don"t get anything from Reedsy.

I love Canva, though I"ve always been too busy to explore its potential much. Another pretty cool one is DesignFeed, which is more for making meme-type graphics, a bit of text over an image sort of stuff – really quick n easy, and I wouldn"t know an affiliate link if it tried to touch me up in a taxi, so this is not a paid promotion 😉
It"s here: https://app.designfeed.io (I think BookBub did a bit about it once, that"s how I found it.)

Another Canva fan here. Love it! I also found another great design site, Stencil. (I think the actual web address is “get stencil.”) They have a free plan as well. I alternate between the Canva and Stencil. Canva has better templates and design help. Stencil lets me resize images, which is a paid feature on Canva.

I just LOVE Canva since I discovered it a couple years ago. I"ve done my covers on it and back when I was promo-ing, the ads. And just anything for blogs and stuff that"s visual. I have Photoshop, but it confuses me still. Canva is simple and fun. If they continue to refine it, I"d even pay for the simpler aspectsfor non-techies. (I don"t need the teams and sharing of the upgrade, but I do wish they let us upload fonts for less a month).

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